Hello everyone

[Feet 'n Inches]

I worked for 25 years or so as a plater welder (MMA whenever I could- with MIG, I was the aero bar king), mainly on quarry plant both in workshops and on site but had to give it up around 20 years ago due to back problems. I made a career change and have stuck with that since, but iron must still be in my blood as I often think back to those happier, simpler times. For DIY type projects, I treated myself to a cheapie air-cooled MMA machine some years back which is a constant source of frustration... Oh for an Oxford!

As for the username, well, I've never got out of the habit of referring to rod sizes by the SWG nomenclature, so a 3.25mm to you will always be a 10 gauge to me.

I look forward to participating, re-learning a lot I have probably forgotten and perhaps offering the odd bit of advice now and then.

 

[madkayaker]

Hello and welcome. I'm a metric kid

 

[Wozzaaah]

Welcome to the forum Feet 'n Inches, good to have you onboard.
Keep your eyes on the for sale section, we get the odd oil-cooled beast coming up on here if you fancy getting one.

 

[Debs.]

Hiya!

I so-wish I had the benefit of 25 years welding experience like you Feet`n Inches......I hope that I`ve still enough time-left to practice and learn to be a half-decent Weldatrix!

I`m a 50`s child of the Imperial (and empirical) weights`n measures too.

 

[malcolm]

Welcome. I'm of the age group that grew up with both metric and imperial. I think of some things in one and other things in the other.

It's a good simile. For welders there are the old hands who like oil cooled transformer welders, and the young-uns that like the fancy inverter based ones. For ARC and TIG the inverter ones are really impressive to use. Cheap ones break when they are dropped, but an Oxford would certainly self destruct if you could lift it in the first place.

Welcome again - your input will be very useful.